Re: [Omaha.pm] Perl, Python, Ruby or PHP ...

[Jay Hannah <jay@jays.net>]

On Mar 3, 2007, at 9:32 AM, Thompson, Kenn wrote:
> I wouldn't use it for production level code unless absolutely 
> necessary, but even big business is still tied to it because of the 
> browser. Also, as long as AJAX-like/Web 2.0 is in play, it'd be tough 
> to not be exposed at some point.
>
> < side note... I kind of like Javascript, but I'm a masochist ;) >

Agreed. It's certainly ubiquitously unavoidable for web warriors. I 
just don't know that I'd spend a lot of time trying to teach it if 
students might not yet be proficient coders in any language. Any other 
language first...

Another trend I've noticed is people trying like hell to spare others 
the pain of Javascript by releasing toolkits that hide the glitch-fest:

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)
   http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
   "Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone 
process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle 
incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript's 
lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components 
difficult and fragile. GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches..."

No point making coding neophytes miserable. Not at least until they're 
getting paid to suffer. :)

But what do I know? While I consider myself an e-commerce developer 
I've never claimed to be a browser-side pretty stuff ninja.

j